RUSH: James in Oak Hill, Ohio. Great to have you on the program. Hi.
CALLER: Hello, Mr. Limbaugh, and this is a pleasure and an honor.
RUSH: Thank you very much.
CALLER: I’m a first-time caller.
RUSH: I appreciate that.
CALLER: Um… Okay, I chatted with your screener a little a while ago, and it seems like you’re — on independent voters, it seems like you’re — being a bit critical and hard on us independents. It seems like you’re thinking that most of us are more liberal-oriented than conservative-oriented; and I don’t have any facts or figures to support that, but I’m thinking it’s probably the other way around, that we’re a bit more conservative than liberal. And it just seems like lately you’ve been kind of… um… Well, a bit — a bit critical and hard on us independent voters.
RUSH: I can understand why you would think that, and I said earlier in the program long before taking your call that my real complaint is not so much with the independents. I mean, you’re who you are. My real beef is how you are portrayed; it is how you are characterized. You are characterized as unique and special. You’re the smartest voters around.
CALLER: (chuckles)
RUSH: You’re not ideologues. You’re open-minded. You make up your mind issue by issue. You hate partisanship. You hate bickering. You hate arguments. You hate confrontation. You do not like it when Republicans start talking about Obama — and when that happens you’re going to run right to Obama.
CALLER: Okay.
RUSH: And these people that are offering this characterization are advising candidates of this. They’re telling candidates that that’s who you are and how to get your vote is to go soft on Obama and don’t be critical of him and all that kinda of stuff, and I think it’s bogus.
CALLER: It is bogus, sir. I personally… Yeah, I know that’s what the liberal media wants to portray it as, but I don’t mind getting in a liberal’s face. I have no problem with that at all, and I wish that the Republicans would do this a lot more. You played the Reagan thing a little a while ago with him directly taking on Carter. That was great, and too bad that there doesn’t seem to be somebody in place right now that’s doing the same thing. Take ’em head-on. Take him on directly is the way I would prefer that they would do it.
RUSH: All right. Well, I appreciate that, and as I say: I totally understand why you might think I’m going after you. You’re who you are, and I’m not gonna change who you are. But I do really resent the way you independents are portrayed, and I resent the fact that consultants and everybody else says that an independent by definition is undecided and therefore every election turns on the independents. And everybody says this! Media pundits on both sides of the aisle say this. It’s as though 80% of the electorate doesn’t matter. “Forty percent will automatically vote Republican; 40% automatically votes Democrat.”
If this were the case, campaigns wouldn’t cost what they cost. It’s patently absurd to believe that 80% of the American people are not reachable during a campaign. That they’ve already made up their minds and are not gonna change their minds, “They’re partisan, and they’re rigid, and they’re ideologues; and they’re this and that and the other thing, but the independents? Ahhhhh, yes,” as everybody spends their time trying to persuade them. Sorry, I don’t buy it — and I also don’t buy what we’re always told about you independents, and that is that the slightest bit of criticism of any Democrat, and you are not going to put up with it; and you’re going to run back to the Democrats in droves because you don’t like partisanship and mean-spiritedness.
I happen to think the biggest partisans, the most mean-spirited extremists in American politics today are Democrats — and the very idea that a Republican who might be critical of Obama’s gonna run you into the arms of Barney Frank or Anthony Weiner or some of these other vociferous, loud, offensive, mean-spirited extremist Democrats is just patently insulting to me — and there’s something else, too. The independents, if you accept everything that’s said about you — that you guys don’t even want a clear-cut choice, that you like muddle; you like things muddled up and not quite clear because it takes a special mind, it takes a special discipline to navigate and wade through all of the gunk. The things that were said about you — and both parties do it — I just don’t happen to be a believer in. I think people who are persuaded by these people to run for office only trying to appeal to 20% of the voters?
It’s no wonder those people lose, and who are the nominees of these people? Who are the candidates that these consultants and everybody put forth as the surefire winners? They’re the ones that lose! Poor old Bob Dole! John McCain. These are the people that end up losing, and who do they lose to? They lose to firebrand partisans on the left. I think all of this is a giant… a trick or whatever. I think it’s a scheme, and I think the left has hatched this as a means of getting Republicans to shut up. It’s a scheme designed to get Republicans not to make their case, to not draw the contrast. If national elections were only about 20% of the voters, George Soros would just go out and buy them. George Soros would not be investing all the money in all the liberal think tanks and media watchdogs and so forth trying to influence opinion. He would just buy the votes of those 20% of the people.
This is all such a crock.
There. I said it very clearly.
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